Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (27 page)

“I do not deny,” responded Don Quixote, “that what happened to us is deserving of laughter, but it does not deserve to be told, for not all persons are wise enough to put things in their proper place.”

“At least,” responded Sancho, “your grace knew how to place the lance, aiming for my head and hitting me on the back, thanks be to God and the care I took to move to the side. Well, well, it all comes out in the end, for I’ve heard people say: ‘The one who hurts you is the one who loves you,’ and I’ve also heard that great gentlemen, after speaking harshly to a servant, give him breeches, though I don’t know what they give after beating him with a lance, unless knights errant give ínsulas after a beating, or kingdoms on dry land.”

“The dice may fall,” said Don Quixote, “so that everything you say turns out to be true; forgive what happened, for you are clever and know that first impulses are not ours to control, but be advised of one thing: from now on you are to refrain and abstain from speaking too much to me, for in all the books of chivalry I have read, which are infinite in number, I have never found any squire who talks as much with his master as you do with yours. In truth I consider it a great fault, both on your part and on mine: on yours, because you do not have a high opinion of me; on mine, because I do not allow a higher opinion. For instance, Gandalín, the squire of Amadís of Gaul, became count of Ínsula Firme, yet one reads of him that he always spoke to his master with hat in hand, bending his head and bowing his body,
more turquesco.
⁵
And what shall we say of Gasabal, the squire of Don Galaor, who was so silent that in order to declare to us the excellence of his wondrous silence, his name is mentioned only once in the course of that history, as great as it is true? From everything I have said you must infer, Sancho, that it is necessary to distinguish between master and minion, gentleman and servant, knight and squire. Therefore, from this
day forward, we must treat each other with more respect and refrain from mockery, because no matter why I lose my temper with you, it will be bad for the pitcher.
⁶
The rewards and benefits that I have promised you will come in time, and if they do not, your wages, at least, will not be lost, as I have already told you.”

“Everything your grace says is fine,” said Sancho. “But I’d like to know, if the time for rewards happens not to come and it’s necessary to fall back on wages, how much the squire of a knight errant earned in those days, and if he was paid by the month or by the day, like a mason’s helpers.”

“I do not believe,” Don Quixote responded, “that those squires ever received wages, but only favors. And if I have mentioned you in the last will and testament that I left in my house, it was because of what might happen, for I do not yet know the standing of chivalry in these our calamitous times, and I should not want my soul to suffer in the next world on account of trivial details. Because I want you to know, Sancho, that there is no profession more dangerous than that of adventuring knight.”

“That’s true,” said Sancho, “for just the noise of the fulling hammers could upset and disturb the heart of an adventuring knight errant as valiant as your grace. But you can be sure that from now on my lips will not open to joke about your grace’s affairs, but only to honor you as my master and natural lord.”

“In that way,” replied Don Quixote, “you will live long on the face of the earth, for after parents, masters must be respected as if they were progenitors.”

CHAPTER XXI

At this point a light rain began to fall, and Sancho would have liked for them to take shelter in the fulling mill, but Don Quixote had acquired such an aversion to it because of the insufferable deception that under no circumstances did he wish to go inside, and so, turning to the right,
they came upon another road similar to the one they had followed on the previous day.

A short while later, Don Quixote caught sight of a man riding toward them and wearing on his head something that glistened as if it were made of gold, and no sooner had he seen him than he turned to Sancho and said:

“It seems to me, Sancho, that there is no proverb that is not true, because all of them are judgments based on experience, the mother of all knowledge, in particular the one that says: ‘One door closes and another opens.’ I say this because if last night fortune closed the door on what we were seeking, deceiving us with fulling hammers, now she opens wide another that will lead to a better and truer adventure; if I do not succeed in going through this door, the fault will be mine, and I shall not be able to blame my ignorance of fulling hammers or the dark of night. I say this because, unless I am mistaken, coming toward us is a man who wears on his head the helmet of Mambrino,
¹
concerning which, as you well know, I have made a vow.”

“Your grace, be careful what you say, and more careful what you do,” said Sancho, “for you wouldn’t want this to be more fulling hammers that end up hammering and battering our senses.”

“The devil take the man!” replied Don Quixote. “What does a helmet have to do with fulling hammers?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” responded Sancho, “but by my faith, if I could talk as much as I used to, maybe I could say some things that would make your grace see that you were mistaken in what you said.”

“How can I be mistaken in what I say, you doubting traitor?” said Don Quixote. “Tell me, do you not see that knight coming toward us, mounted on a dappled gray and wearing on his head a helmet of gold?”

“What I see and can make out,” responded Sancho, “is just a man riding a donkey that’s gray like mine, and wearing something shiny on his head.”

“Well, that is the helmet of Mambrino,” said Don Quixote. “Move aside and let me face him alone; you will see that without speaking a word so as not to waste time, I shall bring this adventure to a conclusion and acquire the helmet I have so long desired.”

“I’ll be sure to move aside,” replied Sancho, “but may it please God,” he continued, “that it turns out to be oregano and not fulling hammers.”
²

“I have already told you, brother, not to mention or even think about mentioning those fulling hammers to me,” said Don Quixote, “or I swear…I shall say no more, but I shall hammer and full your soul.”

Sancho fell silent, fearful his master might carry out the vow, as roundly categorical as a ball, that he had hurled at him.

This is the truth concerning the helmet, the horse, and the knight that Don Quixote saw: in that area there were two villages, one of them so small it did not have an apothecary or a barber, but the other, which was nearby, did, and so the barber in the larger one served the smaller, where a man happened to be sick and needed to be bled, and another needed to have his beard trimmed, and consequently the barber was traveling there, carrying a brass basin; as luck would have it, as he was traveling it began to rain, and to keep his hat from being stained, for it must have been new, he put the basin on his head, and since it was clean, at a distance of half a league, it glistened. He was riding a gray donkey, as Sancho had said, which gave rise to Don Quixote’s thinking that he saw a dappled gray, a knight, and a gold helmet, for everything he saw he very easily accommodated to his chivalric nonsense and errant thoughts. And when he saw the poor gentleman approaching, without saying a word to him, and with Rocinante at full gallop, he attacked with lowered pike, intending to run him through, but when he drew near, without stopping the fury of his charge, he cried:

“Defend yourself, base creature, or hand over to me of your own free will what is so rightly mine!”

The barber, who never imagined or feared such a thing when he saw that apparition bearing down on him, had no other choice, in order to protect himself from the lance, than to fall off his donkey; and as soon as he touched the ground, he leaped up as nimbly as a deer and began to run across the plain, so fast the wind could not catch him. He left the basin on the ground, which satisfied Don Quixote, who said that the heathen had behaved with discretion and imitated the beaver, which, finding itself pursued by hunters, bites and tears off the thing for which he knows, by natural instinct, he is being hunted down.
³
He told Sancho to pick up the helmet, and the squire, lifting the basin in his hands, said:

“By God, this is a good basin and must be worth eight
reales
if it’s worth a
maravedí.
”

And he gave it to his master, who then put it on his head, turning it
around from one side to the other, looking for the visor; and since he did not find it, he said:

“No doubt the heathen for whom this famous sallet helmet was first forged must have had an extremely large head; worst of all, half of it is missing.”

When Sancho heard the basin called a sallet, he could not contain his laughter, but then he recalled his master’s wrath, and he broke off in the middle.

“Why are you laughing, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.

“It makes me laugh,” he responded, “to think of the big head on that heathen owner of this old helmet, which looks exactly like a barber’s basin.”

“Do you know what I imagine, Sancho? This famous piece of the enchanted helmet, by some strange accident, must have fallen into the hands of one who could not recognize or estimate its value, and not knowing what he was doing, and seeing that it was made of purest gold, he must have melted down one half to take advantage of its high price, and from the other half he made this, which resembles a barber’s basin, as you say. Be that as it may, I recognize it, and its transmutation does not matter to me, for I shall repair it in the first village that has a blacksmith, and in a manner that will leave far behind the one made and forged by the god of smithies for the god of war;
⁴
in the meantime, I shall do the best I can to wear it, for something is better than nothing, especially since it will serve quite well to protect me from any stones that people may throw at me.”

“It will,” said Sancho, “if they’re not using a slingshot like they did in the battle of the two armies, when they made the sign of the cross over your grace’s molars and broke the cruet that held the blessed potion that made me vomit up my innards.”

“Losing it does not grieve me greatly, for you know, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that I have the recipe committed to memory.”

“So do I,” responded Sancho, “but if I ever make it or taste it again in my life, let this be my final hour. Besides, I don’t intend to put myself in the position of needing it, because I plan to use all my five senses to keep from being wounded or wounding anybody else. As for being tossed in a blanket again, I won’t say another word, for such misfortunes are difficult to foresee, and if they come, all you can do is shrug your shoulders, hold
your breath, close your eyes, and let yourself go where luck and the blanket take you.”

“You are a bad Christian, Sancho,” said Don Quixote when he heard this, “because you never forget an injury once it has been done to you, but you should know that noble and generous bosoms do not pay attention to trifles. Were you left with a lame foot, a cracked rib, a broken skull? Is that why you never can forget the jest? For, if the matter is viewed correctly, it was merely a jest and a diversion; if I did not understand it in this way, I should have returned and, in avenging you, inflicted more harm than the Greeks did because of the abducted Helen, who, if she had lived in this time, or my Dulcinea lived in hers, could be certain of not enjoying the reputation for beauty she has now.”

Whereupon he heaved a sigh and sent it heavenward. And Sancho said:

“Let it pass as a joke, since it can’t be avenged in reality, but I know what this reality and this joke mean, and I also know they won’t fall away from my memory any more than they’ll fade from my back. But, leaving that aside, your grace should tell me what we’re going to do with this dappled gray horse that looks like a gray donkey and was left behind by that Martino
⁵
who was toppled by your grace, because seeing how he took to his heels and ran like Villadiego,
⁶
he has no intention of ever coming back for it. By my beard, this dappled gray is a good one!”

“It has never been my practice,” said Don Quixote, “to plunder those I conquer, nor is it a knightly custom to deprive them of their horses and leave them on foot, unless the victor has lost his mount in the battle; in such cases, it is licit to take that of the conquered knight as the spoils of legitimate combat. Therefore, Sancho, leave this horse, or donkey, or whatever you say it is, for when its owner sees that we have departed, he will return for it.”

“God knows I’d like to take it,” replied Sancho, “or at least exchange it for this one of mine, because I don’t think it’s as good. Really, the laws of chivalry are strict if they can’t be stretched to let you trade one donkey for another; I’d like to know if I could at least swap the trappings.”

“I am not certain about that,” responded Don Quixote. “In case of doubt, until I am better informed, I should say that you may exchange them if you are in dire need of them.”

“So dire,” responded Sancho, “that if they were for my own person I couldn’t need them more.”

Then, on the basis of that permission, he executed a
mutatio capparum
⁷
and decked out his donkey, showing him off to great advantage.

Having done this, they ate the remains of the food that had been taken from the pack mule and drank from the stream where the fulling hammers were, not turning their faces to look at them, so great was their loathing because of how much they had frightened them.

Having pacified their hunger and tempered their melancholy, they remounted, and with no fixed destination, since it was very much in the tradition of knights errant not to follow a specific route, they began to ride wherever Rocinante’s will took them; behind his will came his master’s, and even the donkey’s, who always followed wherever the horse led, in virtuous love and companionship. And so they returned to the king’s highway and followed it with no set plan or purpose in mind.